


lips are for lovers.

by gayandmagical (smoltae)



Series: arthur comes home. [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 09:09:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20151157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smoltae/pseuds/gayandmagical
Summary: "His face is cradled between Arthur’s hands, gentle. He feels safe. Cherished. Merlin is the strongest being in the world- especially now, with the dragons gone and most magic gone from the world, too- but he’s longed to be safe in his beloved’s arms for so long."or, Arthur finally comes home.





	lips are for lovers.

**Author's Note:**

> notes at end !! just a reincarnation moment, not much happens, a lot of !! emotions. hope you enjoy c:

Merlin’s body may have never aged- or aged only at will- but he swears sometimes it feels like he’s shrivelled up from the inside. By the second century of loneliness, after all those he once loved had died and the landscape that he had called home faded into dust, he thinks his heart became a shrivelled old thing that doesn’t work for much but keeping him alive. In pain, still fragile from the oldest hurt. _Arthur’s face, pale, where it was cradled in his hands. His last breath, tinged with a whispered confession of _something_. The way it felt to watch him sway away into the distance, somewhere Merlin could not follow. The moment the horizon swallowed him whole. _Always, always broken from that pain but still strong enough to keep him stubbornly, goddamnedly _alive_.

Pain is a strange thing, as is the human body’s ability to grow used to it. Merlin knows he isn’t quite human all the way through but that’s one quality his mother’s humanity endowed onto him. Now, loneliness feels like a stitch in the side. Loss, bitter goodbyes, lost friends; toothaches, muscle pains that grow in with the rain. There’s only one thing that still stings like the first day it cut his life open and he prefers not to name it; not to say that name that children now call out in myth and actors play in fairytale. Every time he thinks he’s finally forgotten, it just takes a whisper. It takes a yellow flower with green leaves; a poison and a cure, both brought to him by that great love. It takes a griffin against red, a dragon tattooed onto a stranger’s skin.

Arthur has been gone for centuries but he is still everywhere.

-

He knows. When Arthur comes back, he _knows._

Merlin left the lakeside years ago, only visiting every year to mark the death of the man he loved with a single bloom of daisies. Magic comes to him now only as an embittered, old friend; estranged and distant. Still, the feeling of Arthur’s presence is so visceral and bright and _yes more yes always this more of this _that it bursts out of him like it’s been waiting, just like him, all these years to be called upon in service of his king.

He finds himself by Lake Avalon once more.

There’s a silhouette in the lake and _please, please, please_-

“_Arthur!_” The scream he lets out is almost alien, even to him. It comes from deep inside him, somewhere that’s been hollow and hurt for so long. _“Arthur!”_ And then Merlin is sobbing and his body wants to curl in on itself from the force of it but he forces it to straighten up, forces adrenaline into his legs so he can run. Run, run faster than he has ever before; run to catch that shadowy figure before it disappears into nothing like the mirage he’s so terrified it is.

Arthur Pendragon is still beautiful even a thousand years and a death later. He’s soaking wet like a sopping animal in the rain, his armour is grimy with the lake’s love and he smells of smoke and death and war and other things that Merlin hasn’t gone near to since serving in the ’40's. Still, he’s so beautiful. His heart, it’s beating; his chest moving up and down with breaths moving in and out and it is _beautiful_.

“Arth-” he chokes on a sob, the pain-relief-fear is a tangible thing, “_Arthur, _is it you? Is it you?”

“Merlin?”

That familiar, beloved voice is weak. It’s weary with years of sleep and centuries old pain but it is _there._

“_Yes_,” Merlin gasps out in a sudden rush of breath, “Yes, it’s me, Arthur, it’s me.” And that one word, that one breathed utterance of his name is all it takes to have him kneeling down and taking the tired-heavy, battle-weighed person in front of him into his arms.

Arthur’s armour is still dirty but his face has been washed clean, as if from the centuries spent in the warm purity of Avalon and when he looks at him- _really_ looks at him- for the first time in so long, Merlin sees the face he’s loved for all these years with no reminder of what had kept them apart. Almost like it had never happened. Almost like this is the Arthur, King of Camelot, of all those years ago and not a miracle of magic and destiny reborn into a new world.

The first thing Merlin does is kiss Arthur’s forehead. And one soft cheek, then the other, with the thin scar laced under the skin so gently that you wouldn’t know it unless you touched it. His nose, slightly crooked from the time he’d broken it while racing Morgana when they were just children. His lips leave little wet patches of salt water from his tears behind. Arthur would have been able to taste them, if he pressed their lips together now but no, lips are off bounds. Merlin has kissed Arthur’s face before, his hands; in moments of fear, of goodwill, in those delicate moments that made _them_. But lips are for lovers and he, he is not Arthur’s lover.

Arthur’s arms come up to hold him, strong and warm with life. This isn’t the one sided embrace of the morning Camelot’s king had died. Arthur is holding him.

“Merlin!” he presses into the crook of his neck and they’ve both lost all their words; it feels they’re scrambling through those processed cans of pasta letters that kids loved to eat and trying to construct words out of them. All they have is each other’s names, and for a few minutes, that’s enough.

Then Merlin needs to see him again and so he pulls back and cries, “I thought I lost you. I’ve missed you, I _missed_ you.”

Arthur’s got gloves on but he sheds them into the water carelessly, somewhere into the depths of Avalon where Freya may just keep them safe. He presses his bare hands to Merlin’s skin, slightly sweaty and trembling; it’s blissful. Merlin closes his eyes- just for a moment- at how it feels. When he opens them, Arthur is closer, close enough that he can feel his king’s breath on his skin.

“Arthur?”

His face is cradled between Arthur’s hands, gentle. He feels safe. Cherished. Merlin is the strongest being in the world- especially now, with the dragons gone and most magic gone from the world, too- but he’s longed to be safe in his beloved’s arms for so long.

“I-” Arthur’s tongue darts out to lick his bottom lip, a nervous habit more than anything else, “Merlin? Have you been here all this time?”

Merlin nods, as much as he can in the other man’s gentle grasp. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he says, “Waiting for you to come back to me, my prince.” Because Arthur was his prince before he was all of Camelot’s king, he was Merlin’s to love and protect before he was the whole kingdom’s.

Arthur’s eyes go even more tender. “I don’t deserve- I don’t deserve you, Merlin. Your loyalty, your faith, it’s-”

“It’s all you deserve and more. I told you there would never be another like you, and I was right.”

“Never another like me?” And Merlin might have teased him for that little question into his own notoriety, in another moment. Maybe later, because Arthur is back and Arthur gets to _stay_. But now-

He nods against Arthur’s hand, burrowing a little closer into his palm unconsciously.

“There’s no one like you, either. No one but you.”

Merlin’s eyes dart up at those words. Arthur’s thumbs trace little circles on his cheeks.

“No one for me but you.” The words are whispered against his- _oh my_, Arthur’s lips are just a breath away from his now.

Merlin’s arms, lying dormant at his side, now raise up to wrap desperately around the taller man’s neck. In his hold, there’s a question, a kind of disbelief. _Is this happening? Is this real? _Nothing feels real. It’s too much, it’s too good.

“Yes?” Arthur asks, because pompous and brash as he may be, he is respectful and patient and kind and far gentler than he knows.

“_Yes,_” Merlin insists, “Yes, _yes_, you absolute prat.”

Arthur laughs against his lips. Merlin swallows his laughter and kisses him, brave and bold and grateful. His love’s lips are warm against his, just a little chapped, but warm and strangely familiar. Lips are for lovers, and Merlin is loved and he _loves_. He loves endlessly.

**Author's Note:**

> uh hi !! this fandom is one I've been quietly enjoying for so long and wow!! never seen a fandom so active and creative with such old source material jkajsjas and thank fuck for that because I just discovered the show, just a /decade/ too late and I still have so much fan content to enjoy. 
> 
> I have so much love for these two, this show has become my favorite of all time and these characters, beloved. The only fandom other than my love for bts that has me inspired enough to write. This could? prospectively become a series, less angsty follow ups of Arthur and Merlin's new life in the modern world, let me know if anyone would like that !!
> 
> thanks for reading, feedback means the world x


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